Ingsoc

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The official totalitarian political doctrine of English Socialism in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, enforced by the Party
2. The fictional Newspeak name for the ruling Party's state philosophy of total control in Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
3. A term from Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four for the oppressive English Socialist system that governs Oceania through surveillance and propaganda

Etymology: Ingsoc is a coinage of George Orwell's, not an old word with a long pedigree. It appears in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) as the official name of the single political doctrine of Oceania, and it is a clipped form of "English Socialism." Orwell built it the way the Ministry of Truth's Newspeak builds everything: by compressing a longer phrase into a short, slogan-ready syllable run, so that "English Socialism" becomes "Ingsoc" on posters and in speech. The word is therefore a deliberate blend of two elements. "Eng" stands for English, and "soc" is a shortened form of "socialism," the political tradition Orwell himself had long criticised as it was practised in the Soviet Union. In the novel the name is meant to suggest a national creed, yet its clipped sound also hides the ideology behind a neutral-looking label, which is precisely the point of Newspeak.